In July, a Jeddah criminal court found Badawi, who has been in prison since June 2012, guilty of insulting Islam through his Free Saudi Liberals website and in television comments.

Badawi was sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes. …

Badawi’s legal troubles started shortly after he started the Free Saudi Liberals website in 2008. He was detained for one day and questioned about the site. Some clerics even branded him an unbeliever and apostate.

Human rights groups accuse Saudi authorities of targeting activists through the courts and travel bans. Amnesty International has said Badawi’s “is clear case of intimidation against him and others who seek to engage in open debates about the issues that Saudi Arabians face in their daily lives.”

A prominent Saudi cleric has issued an edict calling for opponents of the kingdom’s strict segregation of men and women to be put to death if they refuse to abandon their ideas.

Shaikh Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak said in a fatwa the mixing of genders at the workplace or in education “as advocated by modernisers” is prohibited because it allows “sight of what is forbidden, and forbidden talk between men and women”. …

“Whoever allows this mixing … allows forbidden things, and whoever allows them is an infidel and this means defection from Islam … Either he retracts or he must be killed … because he disavows and does not observe the Sharia,” Barrak said.

“Anyone who accepts that his daughter, sister or wife works with men or attend mixed-gender schooling cares little about his honour and this is a type of pimping,” Barrak said.

On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. … I shall speak to you as a friend, no more. … I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more. … I have loved the rebel in you, … I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.

According to Saudi reports, King Abdullah was among those requesting the prosecution of Hamza Kashgari, a 23-year-old columnist for a newspaper in Jeddah. Mr. Kashgari, a supporter of the cause of liberal change that triggered the Arab Spring, sent out tweets on Muhammad’s birthday addressing him as an equal and saying, “I love many things about you and hate others.” For good measure, he objected to the status of Saudi women, saying they won’t go to hell “because it’s impossible to go there twice.”

Reporters Without Borders is deeply shocked to learn of the death two days ago of the netizen Sattar Beheshti, six days after he was arrested and taken into custody in Tehran. His family learned of the tragic news in a message to his mother asking her to collect the body the next day. Beheshti was believed to have died under torture while he was being interrogated. …

Beheshti, a 35-year-old worker and political activist, was arrested at his home on 30 October by the FTA, Iran’s cyber police, for “actions against national security on social networks and Facebook”, before being taken to an unknown location. Security officers seized his computer. Beheshti was known to the police and had already been arrested during the student riots in 2002.

According to information received by Reporters Without Borders, the family came under pressure to bury the body quickly and was ordered under threat not to inform the media.

The 54-year-old Canadian-Iranian journalist Zahra Kazemi also died under torture while in detention in Iran, on 10 July 2003. She had been arrested on June 23 June while she was photographing the families of inmates outside Evin prison.

The blogger Omidreza Mirsayafi, arrested on 7 February 2009, died on 18 March 2009 in disturbing circumstances.

Hoda Saber, the 52-year-old former editor of Iran-e-Farda imprisoned in August 2010, died of a heart attack the following year. According fellow prisoners in block 350 at Evin prison, “the prison authorities did not do what was necessary to transfer him to hospital in time, and he was mistreated by the staff of the Evin prison infirmary”.

The journalist had begun a hunger strike on 2 June 2011 in protest against the tragic death of fellow journalist Haleh Sahabi after she was physically attacked by an intelligence ministry official at the funeral of her father, opposition politician Ezatollah Sahabi.

Asif Mohiuddin, a militant atheist blogger who has been hounded by Bangladeshi Islamists and officials, was arrested today by the Detective Branch of the Dhaka police and is currently being interrogated about his recent posts. The police say he could be taken before a judge tomorrow.

“We call for Mohiuddin’s immediate and unconditional release,” Reporters Without Borders said. “After being the victim of knife attack in January, he is in very poor health and needs constant medical attention. The Detective Branch told us he is being ‘treated well’ but the opposite is happening – he continues to be held in deplorable conditions of hygiene and lack of access to medical treatment.

“The persecution of atheist bloggers is the result of a political desire to restrict freedom of expression and reinforce censorship in the name of combatting blasphemy. The home ministry’s announcement that seven other bloggers are to be arrested is meant to discourage news providers. This is unacceptable and contrary to all the fundamental freedoms we defend.” …

His arrest follows the creation of a committee on 13 March that is tasked with identifying “blasphemous” bloggers and bringing them to justice. The committee is under the control of the prime minister’s office.

Police investigators already questioned Mohiuddin about his blog on 23 March. Today’s arrest comes a day after three other bloggers –Subrata Adhikari Shuvo, Mashiur Rahman Biplob and Rasel Parvez – were arrested on similar grounds.

Mohiuddin was badly wounded in an apparent murder attempt in Dhaka on 14 January. Another blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was found hacked to death in a Dhaka street a month later, on 15 February.

Does the government try to prove that Asif is as guilty as the Islamists who tried to murder him? …

Asif wrote blogs expressing his thoughts on atheism, secularism and humanism. He did not kill anyone in the name of atheism. He asked no one to kill anyone to save atheism. He used his keyboard or pen to tell the truth. Islamists nearly killed Asif with knives. The government of Bangladesh thinks there is no difference between Asif, the freethinker and a bunch of murderers.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was a soft-core Islamist. She is now trying to be a hard-core Islamist. She is helping the Islamists for their dreams–of turning Bangladesh into a fundamentalist country–come true.

Sheikh Hasina has been preventing me from entering my country because I am an atheist and a feminist. She put enlightened bloggers in prison because those bloggers do not believe in God.

‘What is the difference between Islamists and Sheikh Hasina?’ I asked.

A friend of mine said, ‘the difference between Islamists and Sheikh Hasina is that Islamists do not pretend to be secular.’

In January, 29 year old blogger Asif Mohiuddin was stabbed. In February, 35 year old atheist blogger involved in the Shahbag protests, Ahmed Rajib, was brutally killed. Islamists continue to threaten prominent bloggers and have called for the “execution of 84 atheist bloggers for insulting religion”.

Rather than defend freedom of expression and protect freethinkers, the Bangladeshi government has arrested several bloggers, promised to pursue others, and shut down websites and blogs.

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This entry was posted on Januar 6, 2014 at 11:58 nachmittags and is filed under Aufklärung, Demokratie erhalten, Scharia, Theokratie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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… A renowned writer, Ahmed Sharif, was attacked by the Islamists. Shamsur Rahman, a famous poet was also attacked. Islamists almost killed Humayun Azad for writing a novel that made fun of them. A cartoonist called Arifur Rahman was in jail after the government said his drawings had insulted Muslims. Asif Mohiuddin was arrested 2 years ago for his blogs that criticized Islam. Now he is stabbed by the Islamists. …

The biggest harm Bangladesh did to herself is not really by killing or imprisoning atheists or forcing atheists to go into exile, but by forcing millions of citizens to keep their mouth shut forever. They no more express their opinions that the majority finds different.

Secularism was one of the pillars of new born Bangladesh. It was supposed to become more liberal and more secular than Pakistan. But in four decades, the rulers of the country managed to make it a truly Islamist country. …

A Muslim cleric from UP, who had filed a police complaint against Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen for allegedly hurting religious sentiments, is now at the forefront of a campaign demanding that she be expelled from India for spreading “anti-Muslim feeling.”

“We will start a campaign for expulsion of Taslima Nasreen. She is against our religion and has hurt our clerics,” said Hasan Raza Khan alias Noori Miyan, son of the ‘sajjadanasheen’ of Bareilly’s Aala Hazrat Dargah, Maulana Subhan Raza Khan. …

Earlier, Noori’s uncle Tauqeer Raza Khan, the chief of Ittehad-e-Millat Council (IMC) had allegedly announced a reward of Rs 5 lakh on Taslima’s head if she remains in India. …

The broadcast of a Bengali TV serial whose script was written by exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen was postponed indefinitely on Thursday after Muslim leaders raised objections, despite both the channel and the author clarifying that the story had nothing to do with religion.

Minority leaders from the ‘Milli Ittehad Parishad’ and Maulana Nurur Rahman Barkati, Shahi Imam of the Tipu Sultan Mosque in Kolkata, had warned the channel to abandon the telecast of the serial ‘Dusahobas‘ (translated roughly as living difficult) on the ground that it hurts religious sentiments. …